My name in his mouth, calm and certain, and I feel it the same way I felt it outside the bar.
“It doesn’t matter what it is. The point stands about Skelly. You want to talk about professional boundaries-”
“You’re not my coach,” he says.
“Excuse me?”
“Officially. You’re a skating consultant. Brought in to work on technique. You’re not on the permanent coaching staff.”
“Well, it might become permanent.”
“And,” he continues. We’re practically the same age. Everyone knows that - you’re an international athlete, you have a profile online.”
“You looked it up?”
He evades my question. “You’re twenty-three. I’m twenty-two,” He shrugs. “Not exactly scandalous.”
I push off again, a proper movement this time, putting real distance between us, and I hear his shoes on the ice behind me. I turn around.
“You can’t skate,” I say. “You’re in shoes.”
“I’m managing.”
He is, annoyingly, managing - picking his way across the ice with the careful balance of someone who spends his life on skates and can find his footing on most surfaces. He stops about a foot away. I have nowhere to go because the boards are behind me and he’s in front of me.
“This is a terrible idea.”
“Probably,” he agrees.
“I coach your team.”
“You consult on our skating,” he says. “Technically.”
“Technically I still need you to do what I say in sessions - how exactly would that work?”
“I always listen to you.” He says it simply.
He’s standing so close now, with the rink empty around us and the admission still hanging in the air between us.
I put my hand flat on his chest. Stopping whatever this is before it becomes something else.
“I have to finish my practice.”
“Okay.”
“And you have to go put your skates on.”
“I do.”
“So. I’ll be done by the time you’re ready.”
He steps back.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “it’s not hypothetical for me either.”
He turns and moves carefully off the ice, and I stand there with my hand still raised. I watch him go to the bench and sit down and pull his skates out of his bag like nothing happened.
I push off hard toward the far end of the rink.
